Grant Martin
, ContributorI monitor the heartbeat of adventure, budget and consumer travel.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

A new venture from Larry Page, the founder of Google and current CEO of Alphabet, officially launched this week in the race to build a commercially viable autonomous air taxi. According to The New York Times, Kitty Hawk, a company based out of California, has already started flight testing its aircraft and network in partnership with officials in New Zealand, where regulations are less strict than in the United States. Eventually, the group wants to bring both Cora, its autonomous taxi and the network surrounding the aircraft to market throughout the world.

Like many aircraft currently in development for use as autonomous taxis, Cora operates using multiple electric motors to maintain elevation, making the vehicle both quiet and efficient. Cora also uses a larger electric motor and traditional aircraft-like wings to create forward-propulsion. According its launch video, the aircraft will eventually have 100km (62 miles) of range and can fly at speeds of over 150km/h (93Mph).

On Tuesday, Kitty Hawk officially unveiled a prototype of the aircraft, initial flight video and its global vision, though it wouldn't commit to a date for when the hardware would actually be in production. That may be because beyond the hardware, Kitty Hawk is working on the autonomous network to fly and manage the aircraft. The group's base in New Zealand should help that; thanks to strong support from the local government and favorable rules for flight testing, Kitty Hawk is in an excellent environment for fast and less-restricted product development. Already, many have seen derivatives of Cora in-flight around New Zealand.

Despite those favorable winds, the path to the mainstream consumer market still won't be easy. Cora's launch comes on the heels of a handful of other announcements and showcases in the last two months. In January, Intel-backed Volocopter made waves at the Consumer Electronics Show by unveiling its two-person multicopter. An offshoot of Airbus stepped into the game in February when its Vahana multicopter took to the skies in Pendelton, Oregon. Ehang, which announced its 184 autonomous taxi in 2016 (and has a deal with the government of Dubai to eventually launch commercial service) even released new footage of its aircraft last month.

Each approach to the autonomous taxi, to be clear, has a slightly different approach. In Kitty Hawk's case, the advantage seems to come less from Cora and more from the vehicle's network and autonomous capabilities. But one thing is certain with today's announcement: the race for flying cars has officially started.